Funny

If you watched the Fstoppers "How To Become a Professional Commercial Wedding Photographer" DVD, you might remember a scene where Lee Is shooting by the water. He later told us he was too concerned for the structural integrity of a dock to put a wedding party on it, stating he didn't want to be "that photographer." Well, Lee might have avoided it, but this group sure didn't.

I've always been a Lowepro fan. I own pelicans, Think Tank, ONA, swag backpacks... the works. But for some reason I keep gravitating back to Lowepro. I currently own both the old and new versions of the Pro Roller bags. In an attempt to show how well protected your gear is inside the new Lowepro Pro Roller X-Series, Lowepro decided to do the ridiculous.

In other this-is-why-I-love-the-internet news, at a cycling race last month, a photographer was seen laying in the way of the racers (check out their expressions). Naturally, the incredibly imaginative fine folks at Reddit photoshop battles were kind enough to make several beautiful creations featuring our out-of-place 'tog.

I’m half Mexican, and if you’re anything like me, you celebrated Cinco de Mayo a few days ago by watching some of your favorite Mexican American films from the ‘80s & ‘90s and eventually made your way to Allison Anders’ 1994 classic, Mi Vida Loca – falling in love all over again with the tough yet endearing cholas, Mousie and Sad Girl. Thanks to artist Michael Jason Enriquez, my inner 16 year old is crushing pretty hard over all the celebrities he has Cholafied. (I'm looking your way Amy Poehler!)

Brought to our attention by Photography Bay, Amazon has patented a most ingenious invention: a completely revolutionary way to get a "true white" background on an image in-camera, without any post processing. We didn't understand how it was done, but now the US Patent Office has helped us all by posting this granted patent complete with plenty of diagrams supplied by Amazon's brilliant inventors.

Today, a friend and fellow photographer showed me an Imgur library which features beautifully terrible head shots from realtors' websites. You really have to see these images to believe them, all the fauxtographs look like they're taken from You're Not a Photographer. Seriously.

The "selfie" has become an epidemic. Satire news reports have recently even referred to it as a certifiable mental disorder, but sadly, many of us (including myself) can't see that far from an actual reality. The compulsion to selfie has effected most of us since the advent of popular social media platforms. Our friends at Digital Rev have put together a helpful video on what to avoid when taking self-portraits with your favorite digital device. See below for some self portraits from our Fstoppers staff.

It seems that anyone can make a camera, but it takes a true visionary to craft a truly excellent camera. It's not the camera we want, but the camera we need. the WALLEY POS-86 is that camera, and it's going to redefine what we think of cinematography from this point forward. 16-bit RAW processing, 3D capabilities, beautiful on-camera light built-in, and all in a compact and well-built ergonomic design.

One of the hardest parts of filming on moving sets such as moving cars or trains is to maintain perfect lighting in a way that makes sense to the viewer. There are many obstacles the filmmakers have to deal with when shooting on a moving set, like how to move the lights while keeping it on the same angle while the vehicle is moving and how to keep the camera shot steady and focused on the subject. Check out this great BTS video showing how filmmakers in China solved these problems.

Fstoppers contributor, Retouching Academy founder and good friend of mine Julia Kuzmenko receives a lot of random messages to her Facebook. Most of them are along the lines of "I love your work," but sometimes they are more direct than that. Recently she was sent a request for a retouch of a photo from someone she didn't know, and she let loose the Retouching Academy for a fun session of Photoshop Fail.

While browsing the web for editing tips, I ran across this video tutorial that had me intrigued based on the title "How To Make A Sick Mountain Bike Edit." I normally don't watch mountain bike videos, but this one had me from the beginning.

Last fall, Nashville based photographer, Andres Martinez, remade a series of famous movie posters with the actors replaced by friends of his who were engaged. While these aren't the first time someone's made movie-poster-inspired wedding / engagement images, these are some of the best I've come across. The posters hit Reddit earlier this week and were a hit. Their subject matter spans old classics, Lord of the Rings, westerns, even Twilight.

Every year the photo community is besieged by April Fool’s Day jokes. This year's batch included a fake Canon 1D-W, a 15-foot tripod, and BorrowLenses adding a “rent an intern” option. This workflow serves as a tongue-in-cheek reminder of just how far our editing software has come since its release in February, 1990. Photoshop 1.0 was Mac-exclusive, only allowed one "undo", and even pre-dates the .jpg file.

While Minneapolis-based photographer Cameron Wittig is probably best known for his intriguing portraits of musicians like Haley Bonar and Andrew Bird, I discovered him through his humorous project, “Duluth Typologies”. The series features houses built on steep hills in the small town of Duluth, Minnesota. Using a simple adjustment of angle, the houses in “Duluth Typologies” appear to be sliding into the flat ground beneath them, creating a humorous commentary on the potential of imagery to lie.

I get it: sometimes it's cool to have lights showing in a photo. It adds a kind of "Hollywood" effect to an image, and can make a subject look like a star. I think that is what the Expendables 3 promotion team was going for, but they added lights that not only aren't doing anything to a photo, but straight up don't make any sense.